


Snap

by bjfic_archivist



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Abuse, Canon, Horror, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-23
Updated: 2005-10-23
Packaged: 2018-12-27 10:49:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12079548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjfic_archivist/pseuds/bjfic_archivist
Summary: Justin has finally had it.





	Snap

**Author's Note:**

> Note from IrishCaelan, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Brian_Justin_Fanfiction_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in September 2017. I posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/bjfic/profile).

Case 1: 

Carl Horvath of Pittsburgh PD called me from New York to investigate an odd series of murders. The first one was incredibly strange because of the circumstances surrounding the particular victim.

When I arrived on the scene there was a mess of people around an apartment complex across the street from the victims home. Apparently he was mowed over by a motor vehicle that never even stopped. In fact, going by the tire tracks we found on the ground the car had actually sped up when the driver saw the victim walking. After I took a look at the tire tracks I pictured my idea of what might have happened. I told Carl exactly what I thought.

The car, we determined later from the tire tracks, was a Jeep Wrangler. I was going slowly down the street where the victim had been living with his girlfriend at the time. When the driver saw the victim his Jeep was at a stop. Right there in the middle of the road. From what I can tell it was well after dark so no one probably noticed the jeep sitting in the middle of the road, which leads me to infer that it was a dark color, a navy or a black perhaps. 

The car saw the victim and slammed its gas down, leaving tire streaks. It mode the victim without so much as a break and kept going down the street, trailing the victims blood down the street with its tires. Leaving the victim to die. He might as well have been road kill to the driver, and the angle and way he was hit, left him exactly that. 

It took us three days to identify the body. And we had no leads for suspects. As far as the neighbors knew the man had no enemies and he was a pretty good guy. No one could think of any motive for any murderer to go hunting him down. I couldn’t put out an APB on all the black or navy wranglers in the area and no one saw the incident occur. So I had to close this one up and consider it an unsolved accident. So I thought I’d start looking around for people that might have something against the victim.

After we identified our John Doe, I found myself with a few leads. There was a place in town known as Liberty Ave where the gay part of society in Pittsburgh hung out. Among them were my suspects. Debbie Novotny, Michael Novotny, Brian Kinney, Justin Taylor and a Daphne Chanders. 

I entered a place called the Liberty Diner and found my first suspect. Debbie Novotny. She said she knew nothing about, never owned a car in her life and only had one thing against the man and that wasn’t enough to make her kill him. She didn’t seem like a murder to me anyway. She offered me a lemon bar. I thought she’d be helpful later if I needed her and thanked her. That was one suspect down and four to go.

I questioned her son next. Michael Novotny was an annoying person to say the least. And he looked rather guilty too. He admitted having a small grudge against the man but his reason was different from his mother’s. In fact it was the opposite. Michael looked guilty but I wasn’t going to assume right away, because the only car in his name was a Miata however it was currently located in Portland Oregon. Though I don’t think he was capable of this. Had he been the killer he’d have probably fessed up. 

Brian Kinney was my next suspect and I’ve never had more trouble trying to figure out a guy in my life. I’m a detective and even he was a challenge for me. Throughout our entire conversation I was still where I had been before talking to him. He could either be guilty or innocent. He gave me no idea’s or leads either way. Maybe that made him guilty, he was keeping me on my feet by having me confused. However, it didn’t seem likely but I was going to keep him in mind just in case.

Justin Taylor and Daphne Chanders were together when I interviewed them. Justin didn’t take long because he was in shock the entire time and I ruled out Daphne right away because she was in tears. I’ve seen crocodile tears in my years as a detective and these weren’t. These were sincere. I ruled them both out.

I closed this case as an accidental death and decided I’d hang around a bit to see if there was anything else suspicious going on here in Pennsylvania. 

Victims name: Craig Jonathon Taylor

Age: 45

Cause of death: Accidental death; vehicular manslaughter.

And with that I closed case one, never expecting to reopen it. Except for what came next I was getting ready to go home when I got the call. Carl called and said there had been another death. So I rushed to the scene.

Case 2:

When I got the scene the first thing I saw was a younger beat cop behind a tree vomiting his guts out. I knew right away that this wasn’t going to be a pretty sight and that it was probably going to be a long night. The quad of the community college campus was roped off with yellow tape and there were curious students milling all around. 

I slipped under the tape and walked up to where the body was covered in a sheet. I flashed my badge to the baby faced officer who looked like he was about to tell me to leave and stepped up next to Carl. “What have we got?”

“Hey, Phil.” Carl Horvath furrowed his brow. “All we know is that the victim was probably male. Brace yourself, and your stomach before you take a peak under there.”

I nodded solemnly and stepped up to the sheet. I’d seen my share of gore in my fifteen years on the force, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be anything I couldn’t handle. What I found under there even made my stomach churn. It was a mass of blood, flesh, and what used to be bones but was now small solid fragments in a mass of mush.

“Jesus…” I dropped the sheet and stepped back, determined to hold my stomach instead of joining the young beat cop puking behind the tree.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” Carl commented, bringing me back to the moment. I simply nodded and went about looking the scene over. I noticed that there were textbooks scattered near a tree about 5 yards away. Putting on gloves, I went over there to take a better look.

Using my flashlight, I looked over the books, noticing that they were splattered with a little blood, but not nearly enough for the attack to have stayed near the books for very long. I moved over to the tree next, seeing some blood on it. Upon further inspection I saw that there was a fair bit of hair and some tissue on there as well.

More than likely, the first strike had knocked the victim’s head against the tree, probably knocking the victim unconscious and sending the books flying. From the marks in the grass, the victim was dragged from near the tree to right out in the open where there were no trees around and beaten, literally, to a pulp.

From the end result, this was no random attack. The victim was chosen for a reason and stalked until he was alone in the dark in a place and beat him until there was nothing left of him. Whoever committed this crime was sick, very very sick.

Four days. It took the forensics doctors four whole days to figure out who the mass of flesh from the college campus was, and that was only because a missing person’s report came in and we were able to test the DNA with some old records we had on him. It made my skin crawl when I heard why we had DNA information on him.

With the new information in my possession, I went to question our suspects. Debbie Novotny was once again first on my list. When I told her the details that I was allowed to give out, her reaction surprised me. She got a little misty eyed and said “You mean you’re actually going to look for his killer? Too bad it doesn’t work both ways, huh?” After that she walked away. I didn’t know what to make of that, so I just noted it and moved on. 

Michael Novotny and Daphne Chanders had very similar reactions. Michael demanded to know why anyone was looking for that “homophobic prick’s killer”. Daphne was colder. Again very surprising reactions, though I couldn’t believe that either of these two people could have committed such a murder.

Next came Brian Kinney and Justin Taylor. They were together in the loft they shared and I questioned them at the same time. Justin seemed shocked, unable to deal with what I was telling him. Kinney slung an arm around his boyfriend and told me very plainly “If you’re here to ask if we killed him, the answer is no. If you’re here to ask if we’re sorry he’s dead, the answer’s no to that too. Goodbye, Detective Barbara.” And that was that, I had been dismissed.

People connected to Justin Taylor seemed to be dropping like flies and there was no way I was leaving now. 

Victim’s Name: Christopher Andrew Hobbes

Age: 22

Cause of Death: Beaten to death with a baseball bat

Now, I wanted to believe that the two deaths I had seen in my time in Pittsburgh were unrelated. I wanted to believe that Craig Taylor’s death was an accident and the fact that the man who’d attacked his estranged son five years earlier was brutally murdered was just a coincidence. I tried and had almost convinced myself when another phone call brought me back to reality.

Case 3:

It was raining as I stepped out of my car and walked towards the seedy looking apartment building just off Liberty Avenue. There were uniformed officers everywhere, keeping people away from the building. I saw a few coming out of the building looking green and I was a little nervous about what I was going to find. I found Carl Horvath just inside the apartment I’d been told to go to.

“Carl.”

“Phil.” He nodded. He wasn’t looking so well himself.

“What do we have?”

“One victim, genital,” Carl paused to swallow looking absolutely ill, “mutilation and rape. It looks like he bled to death.” 

I took a deep breath and moved towards the crime scene, a little nervous about being able to hold the greasy burger and fries that had been my dinner down. I walked into the room and walked directly back out, taking deep breaths. In all my years on the force, I’d never seen anything so heinous. Telling myself that I was a professional who had only a few days earlier seen the body of a young man beaten and bloodied, I stepped back into the room with my pencil and notepad in hand.

I noted the champagne bottle lying on the floor near the victim, obviously having been used to rape the victim. Trying to avoid looking at the victim for the time being I scanned the rest of the room. There were two glasses on the table, one empty one full. I noted to myself to have forensics check for DNA and fingerprints, but I was certain that if we were dealing with the same killer there would be none. There was nothing of use on the baseball bat at the Hobbes scene.

Finally, bracing myself I went to look over the victim, still hanging in the sling that was suspended from the ceiling. Written on his stomach in messy scrawl was the word “bitch” and all genetalia had been removed and was lying in a pool of blood directly beneath the victim. His face was left in tact and there was no doubt from the photos on the shelf in the living room that the victim was Gary Saperstein, owner of the notorious gay club Babylon and Justin Taylor’s former employer.

From the looks of the apartment, there wasn’t any struggle. It looked like the victim had gotten into the sling of his own volition. The two glasses on the table, which we would later discover were filled with sky high amounts of Rohypnol, indicated that the victim had been having a drink with a guest, someone he knew.

The intimate nature of crime suggests that it was a crime of passion as opposed to sexual play gone wrong. The person who committed the crime obviously wanted to really torture the victim. Forensics later discovered that the victim had been bleeding for nearly an hour before he died, he would have been in more pain than imaginable.

Back at my apartment that night I went over all the clues I had. I had no doubt at this point that the three mysterious deaths I had encountered since arriving in Pittsburgh only 10 days earlier were related. The death of Gary Saperstein basically eliminated Daphne Chanders from my list of suspects, not that I had really ever suspected her in truth.

I thought about Debbie Novotny. I could imagine a woman like that having absolutely no issue doing to someone what was done to Gary. She had balls, that woman. There was no doubt in my mind. But was she capable? I didn’t know. 

Michael Novotny didn’t really seem like he could have been the killer to me either. From what I’d heard, he and Justin Taylor had something of a love/hate relationship. I didn’t see any reason why he’d be killing people close to Justin. It didn’t add up. Put on top of that, Michael’s meek demeanor and what I’d heard about everyone loving him and I was seriously doubting him as a suspect.

Brian Kinney. Of all the people on my list, he was the one who I really thought could be the one. His lover’s estranged father who he had a mutual hate relationship with was run down in a vehicle resembling the one he drove. The man who gay bashed his lover was beaten to death with the same weapon that he performed the bashing with. And now, his lover’s former boss, a man with a questionable reputation for his relationship with his staff, was brutally murdered. Yeah, in my mind Brian Kinney was the killer. 

Justin Taylor would have been an even more obvious choice had I not seen his reactions to the deaths. It was obvious that he still loved his father, even despite their separation. He was completely floored upon hearing about Hobbes, and everyone I’d talked to said that Justin had moved past the bashing a long time ago. And Saperstein, Justin had no reaction to his death whatsoever. His face remained calm and he asked why he should care about some slimy pervert who used to be his boss. No, I ruled Justin out.

Victim: Gary Harold Saperstein.

Age: 38

Cause of Death: Murder

I was searching for more clues, doing interviews all over the place. It was after three days of searching for something solid to tie Brian Kinney to the crime that one of my suspects was eliminated. However, I wasn’t sure whether this was good for the case against Brian Kinney or bad.

Case 4:

When Carl Horvath called me in the middle of the night to come down to another apartment just off Liberty Avenue, I practically killed myself trying to get there as quickly as I could. When I got to the address he’d given me, I got a bad feeling immediately. 

There weren’t nearly as many uniforms there as there had been at the other three crime scenes and this one had a very different feel. As soon as I got inside, I knew that my bad feeling was because this one was completely different than the others.

“What have we got Carl?” I asked him, noticing that his eyes were red and he looked more weathered than ever.

“Suicide… or an accident. We can’t tell yet.” He led me to the bedroom where I saw the body hanging from a silk scarf tied to the ceiling. His pants were down around his ankles.

“God! Is that…?” 

“Yeah…” Carl rubbed a hand over his face. 

“Shit.” I looked at the body one last time before leaving the room. “If it’s not murder, why did you call me?” 

“That’s one of your suspects, isn’t it?” Carl asked. “I don’t think it’s him, but I also never thought that he’d kill himself.”

I looked around the room one last time, something feeling a little off about the whole situation. I noticed that under the coffee table was a little brown pill bottle. I used a rubber glove to pick it up and found that it was full.

“Carl?” I looked up at him. “Run a toxicology on the body, alright? I just want to know what kind of pills he took to end it, okay?”

“Will do, Phil.” Carl nodded.

“And good luck telling his mother, I know you two had thing a couple of years back.” I patted his shoulder and stepped out of the room. Something was off, I just didn’t know what it was.

Victim: Michael Victor Novotny

Age: 35

Cause of Death: Suicide

Case 5: 

I’d successfully eliminated two suspects and one eliminated himself. Now I knew that the only two people left capable were Brian Kinney and Justin Taylor. Though I was slowly leaning toward Brian and ruling out Justin. One thing disturbed me. The bottle of pills found at the scene was Justin Taylor’s prescription. Now there could be plenty of explanation for this and it could even end up pointing the finger at Brian.

It was then I received the final call about this these bizarre murders from Carl. He was at a shitty little apartment complex near PIFA, the same school Taylor attended. This was starting to wear on my nerves, especially when I arrived at this next gruesome scene. 

The young man had literally had his heart ripped out. And again no finger prints. 

The murderer obviously had a key to the apartment because there was no hint of a struggle or a break in and it had been late at night so the victim would have been asleep by this time. The suspect came in, gagged the victim and tied him to the bed, then proceeded with a serrated knife to literally carve the victims heart out. The victim was still alive and conscious when this took place and judging by the marks on his wrists where the ropes had been holding him in place.

The suspect didn’t live long after his heart was removed from his chest cavity. You can only survive three seconds without a heartbeat before you are considered legally dead. I’m sure it’s faster without an actual heart. The suspect then went about strangling the already dead victim with a violin cord. Apparently the victim was a talented player. When he was finished he hung the removed organ from the ceiling by another cord, over the body of the dead man on the bed.

The only other person that had a key to the apartment was Justin Taylor. But he lived with Brian Kinney. So I questioned them both.

Brian was off Standish. “I never could look at the fucker straight let alone touch him long enough to…” Kinney couldn’t finish the sentence to it made it very obvious he was not the murderer.

Leaving my only suspect Justin Taylor. The one time scorned lover of the dead violin player. But I had no evidence to pin the crimes on him. I just had to be savvy and find where he would strike next, before he did. Catch him red handed.

Victim: Ethan Melville Gold

Age: 25

Cause of death: torture and mutilation. 

 

Case 6: 

I’d figured out Justin’s plan. He was playing the vengeance card. Each victim so far was killed because of some act they had committed against Taylor. First it was his father, who abandoned him for being homosexual. The next was Christopher Hobbs who had nearly killed Taylor when they were in high school. According to one of Gary Saperstein’s former employees, the man had once tried to drug rape Justin. Michael Novotny had a history of giving Taylor a hard existence and according to Kinney, had once wished Justin’s death. As for Gold, he’d broken Justin’s heart when they had a brief relationship so Justin in turn ripped out his. There was only one-person left that could receive the vengeance attack from Mr. Taylor. 

Brian Kinney.

I couldn’t find either of them anywhere. I looked high and low, in all their usual hangouts and in their loft and even the alleys. No sign of the two. It’s as if they disappeared. I was about to give up when at the hotel I was staying in, I heard some shouting from up in the parking garage. I quickly got my gun ready and headed for the source of location of the anguish.

“I’m sick and tired of you treating me like your personal sex toy!” I heard Taylor say. “I am tired of you walking all over you. You think you’re all big and macho Mr. I don’t believe in love. Well I tell you what! No more! You won’t hurt me anymore. Now, lets test your mother’s theory on fags going to hell!”

I saw him raise a gun. I was faster and raised mine. Not taking the hesitation to see whether or not he’d fire, I did. Three rounds. One. Two. Three. They hit him squarely in the back and he went face first to the ground without so much as a noise. Kinney was beside the fallen young man in seconds, sobbing and crying the boy’s name…

Brian Kinney shot out of bed with a yelp. He was sweating and panting. Justin rolled over onto his side and squinted at his lover, who had woken him with the yelp.

“What’s wrong?” Justin yawned.

“I had this dream… you were killing… you killed a bunch of people… everyone who has ever done you wrong.” Brian looked at him.

Justin gave him a weird look and turned away. “No more E when you watch Memento okay Brian.”

Brian watched the younger man curl up on his side and doze back off. The older man smirked and began to laugh hysterically.

“I should have known you’d never snap like that sunshine.” He said settling back into bed.

“Good night Brian.” Justin mumbled.

“Good night Justin…” He thought a minute. “I love you.”

Justin turned to face him, then smiled. “I love you too.”


End file.
